COVID Booster Shots Carry ‘Increased Myocarditis Risk’ for Young Adults: Nordic Study
Booster vaccination against COVID-19 is linked to a higher risk of heart inflammation among adolescents, according to a recent study using data from several Nordic nations.
The peer-reviewed study, published in the European Heart Journal on Feb. 15, evaluated the risk of myocarditis among 12- to 39-year-olds after receiving COVID-19 mRNA booster vaccination. Myocarditis refers to an inflammation of the heart muscle myocardium. The study analyzed data from 8.9 million young adults from four nations: Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden.
In total, 1,533 cases of myocarditis were identified with the study concluding that the “booster dose is associated with increased myocarditis risk in adolescents and young adults.”
Among males, a third dose of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine was associated with an “increased incidence rate of myocarditis” within 28 days of inoculation compared to a longer period after the second dose.
The study noted that the association of myocarditis with COVID-19 mRNA vaccines has appeared “strongest in male adolescents and younger males and after the second dose.”
The study was authored by 12 experts from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Swedish Medical Products Agency, Statens Serum Institut, and the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare.
Significant Spike in Cases
Cases of myocarditis among vaccinated individuals in the United States spiked within the first year of the COVID-19 vaccination campaign, according to a study published in late January that looked at data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).
“We found the number of myocarditis reports in VAERS after COVID-19 vaccination in 2021 was 223 times higher than the average of all vaccines combined for the past 30 years. This represented a [2,500 percent] increase in the absolute number of reports in the first year of the campaign when comparing historical values prior to 2021,” the U.S. study said.
Roughly 50 percent of myocarditis cases occurred among youths and 69 percent of affected individuals were males. Out of a total of 3,078 COVID-19 vaccine-induced myocarditis cases as of August 2023, 76 percent resulted in emergency care and hospitalization, and 3 percent died.
New studies are being published looking at reducing myocarditis risk when vaccinating adolescents against COVID-19, appearing to confirm the fact that such a risk exists for the shots.
A Feb. 14 study in the journal Vaccines found that extending the interval between the first and the second dose of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines leads to a 66 percent “lower risk of incident carditis among adolescents.”
Carditis is the general term for inflammation of the heart.
The study referred to adolescents as a “vulnerable population” while pointing out that “previous studies indicate an increased carditis risk among adolescents following the two-dose messenger RNA COVID-19 vaccine.”
COVID-19 and Myocarditis
There have been suggestions that COVID-19 infections cause more myocarditis cases than the vaccines.
For instance, a study published by the American College of Cardiology in 2022 said that “overall, the risk of myocarditis is greater after SARS-CoV-2 infection than after COVID-19 vaccination.”
Dr. Daniel Jernigan from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently testified at a hearing of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. In his testimony, Dr. Jernigan claimed that the risk of getting myocarditis is “much lower among those vaccinated than among those that are unvaccinated.”
However, cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough disputes the claim that COVID-19 infections cause myocarditis.
In a post on his website, he described this argument as “a twisted rationale for giving out COVID-19 vaccines, and in a perverted manner, creating more myocarditis in the population. If SARS-CoV-2 infection caused myocarditis or inflammation of heart muscle tissue, then it would be seen on autopsy in fatal cases of COVID-19.”
Dr. McCullough cited an October 2022 study involving an autopsy of the hearts of COVID-19 infected individuals. The analysis “concluded the virus does not infect the heart,” he said.
The cardiologist called claims of the COVID-19 virus infecting the heart and causing myocarditis “false claims made from automated hospital data and not adjudicated, autopsy proven cases.”
“The COVID-19 vaccines install mRNA in the heart and the Spike protein directly damages and incites inflammation into the heart muscle causing the pathophysiology we see every day in cardiology practice,” he wrote.
Researchers from a Jan. 24 study who looked into the initial phase 3 trials of Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 mRNA vaccines found that their estimated harms “greatly outweigh the rewards.”
They called on world governments to impose a “global moratorium” on the COVID-19 vaccines “given the well-documented [serious adverse events] and unacceptable harm-to-reward ratio.”
The authors also recommended an “immediate removal” of COVID-19 vaccines from the childhood immunization schedule, pointing out that children were at very low risk of infection.
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Did lockdowns cause more harm than good?
The question of whether lockdowns caused more problems than they solved will be picked over for years to come, even if the official Covid-19 inquiry shows little interest in peering into the matter. The latest contribution, a paper from Lund University in Sweden, provides further evidence that this really is something that a UK inquiry needs to investigate. The paper, published by the Institute for Economic Affairs, seeks correlations between the severity of lockdown restrictions in 25 European OECD members and outcomes in terms of excess deaths, economic growth and public deficits. It seems to provide a fairly clear answer: lockdowns were associated with higher overall levels of excess deaths, poorer economic performance and higher public debt.
It starts by using a marking system for the severity of lockdown, which gives every country a figure of between 0 and 100 – where 0 would be no Covid measures at all and 100 a cessation of all economic and social life. On the this measure the UK comes out at 50, France 48 and Italy 60. Sweden was given a lockdown rating of 39. Interestingly, although Sweden was perceived as an outlier throughout the pandemic, and indeed it did plough a very different furrow in the early weeks, Norway and Finland were given slightly lower overall lockdown scores for the duration of the pandemic, owing to the greater relaxation of measures during the rest of 2020.
Overall, the study establishes a fairly weak positive correlation between severity of lockdown and excess deaths. It establishes stronger negative correlations between severity of lockdown and economic growth, and between lockdown severity and the fiscal cost of the pandemic (as measured by the size of the budget deficit in 2020 and 2021 divided by GDP in 2019).
In other words, lockdowns impacted negatively on the economy and the public finances, as might be expected, but they also appear to be associated with slightly higher rates of excess deaths. The study uses excess deaths rather than Covid deaths because it is trying to assess the total effect of lockdowns: how many lives they saved against how many lives they cost through poverty, loneliness, a failure of people to seek timely healthcare because they had been told to stay at home etc.
There are, however, a number of caveats to be put against these findings. Firstly, as the authors admit, the system for giving countries a lockdown score is largely subjective. This part was not in fact the work of the authors – they used a scoring system developed for an earlier study. Secondly, the study doesn’t account for the fact that different countries had different levels of exposure to the virus – which was bound to spread differently in a country like Britain, which has a high density of population and many interconnections with the rest of the world, than in say Norway, with a much lower population density, smaller urban areas and fewer international flights. Indeed, the pattern of excess deaths in Sweden reflects the number of people who had travelled to the Alps for skiing holidays in early 2020 – the areas where more people went to the Alps suffered higher death rates.
Thirdly, it overlooks the fact that lockdowns were often a consequence of high death rates rather than the other way about – Britain, for example, had two further lockdowns in the autumn and winter of 2020-21 precisely because death rates were high and rising.
Scandinavian countries got by with fewer restrictions because death rates were lower – but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they would have ended up with more deaths had they made restrictions tougher. We will never know what would have happened had Britain, say, followed the Swedish approach. Fourthly, there are plenty of other variables which were not measured in this study. You could, for example, see what correlation existed between excess death rates and obesity rates, smoking rates or vaccination rates.
All this said, there is clearly a strong case to be made that severe lockdowns caused more misery – deaths included – than they averted. It is essential that this is properly debated before we plan for future pandemics.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/02/did-lockdowns-cause-more-harm-than-good/
*************************************************Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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